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Is Sex Necessary? or Why You Feel The Way You Do

James Thurber (1894 - 1961) and E. B. White (1899 - 1985)

From the Foreword:
“During the past year, two factors in our civilization have been greatly overemphasized. One is aviation, the other is sex. Looked at calmly, neither diversion is entitled to the space it has been accorded. Each has been deliberately promoted.
In the case of aviation, persons interested in the sport saw that the problem was to simplify it and make it seem safer. They introduced stabilizers and emergency landing fields. Even so, the plain fact remained that very few people were fitted for flying. With sex, the opposite was true. Everybody was fitted for it but there was a lack of general interest. The problem in this case was to make sex seem more complex and dangerous. This task was taken up by sociologists, analysts, gynecologists, psychologists, and authors; they approached it with a good deal of scientific knowledge and an immense zeal. They joined forces and made the whole matter of sex complicated beyond the wildest dreams of our fathers. The whole country became flooded with books. Sex, which had hitherto been a physical expression, became largely mental…….”

From the Preface:
“Men and women have always sought, by one means and another, to be together rather than apart. At first they were together by the simple expedient of being unicellular, and there was no conflict. Later the cell separated, for reasons which are not clear even today, although there is considerable talk. Almost immediately the two halves of the original cell began experiencing a desire to unite again-usually with a half of some other cell. This urge has survived down to our time. Its commonest manifestations are marriage, divorce, neuroses, and a little less frequently, gun-fire.” - Summary by E. B. White and James Thurber

To see Thurber's drawings from this book please follow this link: PDF file (99MB)

Genre(s): Humor

Language: English